Closing Old CC Accounts

[Crisco20]

I have been rebuilding my credit for a couple of years now, and i currently have seven (7) open CC accounts in good standing.  Three (3) of the seven have an annual fee associated with them, and i would like to close these accounts.  Unfortunately, those three are also the accounts i have had the longest.  I am worried it will hurt my overall score if i close these accounts because they have the longest history.  The also have the highest available credit limit compared to my new CC accounts which I opened because of lower interest rates and no annual fees.  The availability of these new accounts can be attributed to my credit score increasing, and i don't want to go backwards.  Any advice would be appreciated.

[BabyBlue]

Maybe instead of closing the accounts you will consider trying to have the fees waived? I don't think they will consider waiving the fees permanently, but it is worth the shot.

I am not sure what bank issued the cards w/ the annual fees, but the other option would be to do a product change to another card without annual fee w/ the same bank. This way you would keep your account history and get rid of the annual fee. You could even get a better interest rate, depending on the credit card issuer's offers and your scores.

[Anonymous]

Agreed. Try and upgrade to a non fee card with same bank to keep CLs. Anyways that is pretty much what you loose when you close CCs.

You loose balance of accounts. So before you had 7 open accounts. If you used 3 and they reported a balances you still had less than 50% with balances. If you dropped to 5 accounts (Which is fine) you could only carry 2 balances or you would go over 50% usage of balances. I think you can have up to 3 balances anyway and not get too badly hurt either way.

The other part is loss of over all CL for UTL. This is where I think it will hurt. But you can take the money you save on annual and monthly fees and pay more debt to keep UTL lower to compensate. The trick is to spend less than 10% over all between all cards in ratio to over all CL. But you can easily just spend less and not get hurt a bit.

Over all I say Cancel the Fee cards. As far as the history, you will see it on your CR for 10 years before it drops off.

If you need more cards on your profile consider a Target card. And secured bankcards work just as well and the fees are cheap. I found that Wells Fargo, BOA and Citibank and many others have great secured cards. Don't forget credit unions!